March 11, 2000

Late Afternoon Circuit

The combination of a sick daughter and a son's basketball tournament kept me off the slopes yesterday and I assumed it would today as well. However the hoops were done early and I managed to get to the hill about two thirty. While this hardly seemed like enough time to make it worth while, I was glad I went for I managed to squeeze in a respectable amount of vertical on some pretty nice snow.

The snow up top was soft and even powdery in places, but some lower stuff like Diamond Back was at best just okay, with lots of slick between the somewhat sticky moguls. Cedar Ridge was pretty nice at the top but it became more like Diamond Back near the bottom, although I thought it was better. That might just have reflected my finally getting my mogul legs though. Easter was really nice right down to and even including part of the top of Freeway. The gully between Freeway and China Wall had, as might be expected, generous quantities of ice, but also enough soft mounds to permit a semi graceful descent.

I didn't really notice much about the lower groomed runs other than the snow changed to nice soft corn about half way down the lower mountain.

It snowed quite heavily for a brief time while I was out and it was enough to turn the very icy Bear T-Bar track into some nice velvet in the course of a single loop through Cedar. Alas it seems to have stopped though.

At twenty to seven it is 1 C at the house and cloudy.